Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
pisteuo
To believe. In Greek that is closer to entrusting yourself than to agreeing with a claim.
John 3:16, in every translation this tool compares.
I believe the bridge will hold. I believe the bridge will hold, so I drove across it. Only the second sentence is what the Greek verb ordinarily describes.
Because the word English uses for the central Christian response has drifted toward mental assent, and the Greek verb is about where you put your weight.
Every English version reads believe. A few render trust in places where believe would sound too thin.
πιστεύω pisteuo · G4100
Pisteuo is the verb from pistis, faith or faithfulness, and it regularly takes a preposition meaning into or upon rather than a plain object. Believing into someone is not an English construction and it is the one John uses constantly.
English believe has narrowed toward accepting a proposition. There is no English verb meaning to commit yourself to something you have judged reliable.
When a Greek verb takes an odd preposition, the preposition is carrying meaning English usually has to supply with extra words.
Believe is the majority rendering everywhere and no major version departs from it. Trust appears in some paraphrases and in footnotes.
- pisteuo eis, believe into, at John 3:16; 6:29; 14:1
- Same root as pistis and pistos, faithful
- James 2:19 uses the verb of demons, which is the limit case for the assent reading
